Saturday, October 10, 2015

Contrary to Popular Belief Trading Chase Headley Will NOT Fix the Offense

Whenever the Yankees “fail” during the postseason and fall
short of a World Series championship the finger is quickly pointed around the
team and the organization by the fans. Nothing can just happen in the land of
the New York Yankees and someone absolutely has to be held accountable or to
blame for every mistake, that’s the way things are unfortunately whether you
agree with them or not. Me personally, I am okay with not being the best team on
the field every single season if it means the team can rebuild from within and
do things the right way. I am the anti “blow this team up and start from
scratch” guy but others have their opinions and they are certainly entitled to
them. That doesn’t mean I won’t call you out on them though…

The tweet above was pretty tongue in cheek but it put into
words what a lot of Yankees fans voiced to me on Twitter the night of the Wild
Card Game and the morning after. The team needed to do something, and I agree
with that, and the something I saw more than anything else (well besides the
generic “Fire Cashman” and “Fire Girardi” tweets I receive on the daily) was
that many of our followers wanted to trade Chase Headley in order to fix the
offense. Okay.

I will start this off by saying I think the team needs more
power out of a premium position like third base and Headley doesn’t seem like
he will provide that in New York. I will not agree with trading away the guy
that led the team in base hits to “fix the offense.” This team is reliant on
the #TooManyDamnHRs, something the fans also complain about openly and often,
so trading away the guy that doesn’t hit for much power but leads the team in
hits makes absolutely no sense to me. Bringing in, just for an examples sake,
Manny Machado helps the offense and I am all for that since he adds defense,
average hitting and power to the club, but adding someone like a Chris Davis
only hurts the club in the long haul in my opinion. Sure it pads the home run
and runs scored stats but what did having the second highest scoring offense in
2015 get the team in the playoffs? A shut out, a trip home for the winter and a
rude awakening by the fans that were visibly and audibly sick of the team’s
performance the last 60 days or so of the season.

Calm down and take a breath Yankees fans. Unless Cashman is
going to pull off a miracle trade like the Blue Jays acquisition of Josh
Donaldson last season the team is not going to improve at third base. Trading
away Headley just to be rid of him is not going to fix the offense, it’s going
to hurt the offense even more. Check the stats and use a clear and calm mind.
We’re all better than that.